Alexey tried to forget that the reward for surviving the march would be a spot among the Winterguard. Growing up, he was dead set on wanting that and nothing else, but after seeing their true nature, he was completely unsure of what he wanted. The uncertainty was scarier to him than anything the Frozen Forest had to offer.
Alexey recommended to the recruits that they divide their group into three: the front guard, middle guard, and rear guard. Most of the men would occupy the mid guard and rear guard while ten men would make up the front guard and act as scouts. The groups were all to march at a comfortable pace, and if the formations needed to communicate with one another, a group no smaller than three men would move to and from to relay the pertinent information. “Always track the footsteps of the formation ahead of you,” Alexey reminded the men. Two weeks into the march, there had not been a single death in the group, and the guards always caught up with one another.
The current front guard was made up of Alexey, Viktor, Anton, Dimitri, Yuri, and five other recruits named Boris, Yelchin, Igor, Chernov, and Petrand. They all moved swiftly and spoke softly to one another in the silence of the Forest. The trees sprouted from the ground in increasingly sparse locations, and frozen streams ran through the ground alongside heavy black rocks. Since the men were well into their march, the cold grip on their throats did not affect them so greatly as in the beginning, but their voices were still choked by the cold air.
“Nothing all that exciting has happened quite yet,” Chernov mentioned. He was a fat boy back in the depot, but the march had turned him into a hardened young man with a well-defined chin. His eyes were steel-blue with somewhat of a glow to them.
“You want excitement?” Yelchin questioned. He was tall and blonde with green eyes, and the skinniest of the entire front guard.
“Not necessarily, but this has run quite contrary to my expectations,” Chernov replied.
“Fair point,” said Igor. He was of average height and build, with a high-pitched voice. “From what Alexey told us I expected to see packs of Abominations and other such creatures. Instead, we encounter more fucking ice.”
“We’ve not encountered any Abominations because you all took heed of my advice and remained in a large group,” Alexey informed. “If you were dumb enough to fend for yourself like the ones that ignored me on the first day, you would’ve encountered plenty of excitement.”
“Perhaps we made the wrong choice,” Boris protested. “This is just fucking boring, I would love some excitement.” His voice was deep, but he looked much like a child, being the shortest man in the group.
“I’d rather be bored and alive than excited and dead,” Yuri countered.
I did not realize he was capable of such wisdom, Alexey thought.
Alexey stopped right before a frozen river, and the men stopped with him. The surface sloped downwards slightly to the group’s left. Alexey could see a hundred feet before the river faded into the cold mist that was always present in the Forest.
“Down there.” Alexey pointed towards the area he had been gazing at. “Perhaps there will be a safe zone down there. It should be dark again in about four hours, so we have plenty of time to check it out. Be sure to walk alongside the river bed, as we won’t be leaving footsteps on the river itself.”
Alexey began to march leftwards along the riverbank, and the nine others followed him. After hundreds of feet had been covered, the air began to get a little warmer, and the mist began to fade.
“What’d I tell you?” Alexey said joyously.
Alexey began to increase his speed, and the downhill slope began to grow steeper. He ran down to the bottom of the hill to reach the entrance to a cave that must have been thirty feet tall and twice as wide. At first glance, the cave was shrouded in darkness, but Alexey made out a hint of an orange light deep inside.
“There!” he shouted, pointing at the light. “Somebody lit a fire inside!”
Alexey dashed into the entrance of the cave and did not turn to look behind him, assuming the group was clever enough to follow him. As he traversed farther into the cave, the air lost the bite of its chill, and the orange light grew larger. The landscape of the cave was bumpy and rocky, but far more traversable than Alexey would have predicted. Perhaps whoever lit that fire cleared the terrain to make it easier for them to move around? Whoever was inside the cave before any of Alexey’s group had arrived must have been some of the recruits who went off into the forest alone on the first day. Alexey felt a hint of admiration for their ability to find a pocket of warmth, clear the rocks to make their traversal easier, and find wood to prepare a fire. He stopped walking and squinted at the glow, still unable to see anything clearly.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” Alexey shyly called out towards the orange glow, that now appeared as a dwindling fire.
There was no reply. Alexey wagered the fire must have been less than twenty feet from him. Someone had to have heard me. His heart began to race.
“Hello? I must assume that our fellow Winterguard recruits lit this fire before us?” Anton inquired as he caught up to Alexey. “And you did a shitty job of it, I must say.”
Alexey remained silent. He inched towards the fire, remaining rigid and highly vigilant. The rest of the group cued in to his stature and began to tense up as well. The cave was completely silent besides the sounds of a weak fire and Alexey’s precise footsteps. The orange light of the fire flickered onto the cave ceiling, offering glances at disfigured and lifeless black rocks. With a face dense with concern, Alexey looked back at his comrades, all of whom looked at their de facto leader with the same concern.
Alexey crept past the fire, and he cursed as he saw the bodies. “Oh shit…” He did not shout. In fact, he could barely get the words out from his mouth as he gaped at the blood, stray limbs, and chunks of flesh that densely covered the cave floor. They had to have been recruits, once, but now they were unrecognizable paintings of flesh and blood.
“Oh shit,” Anton said, sounding almost panicked. Anton’s uncharacteristically fearful tone made Alexey even more unsettled.
Alexey’s legs froze. He turned around to look at the group. No one spoke, and everyone remained completely still. The air was now completely silent, and then the silence was broken by an inhuman growl.
From deeper in the darkness of the cave, heavy and thudding footsteps echoed hauntingly. Each passing step grow louder, and louder, until the flickering light of the fire glimmered off the fur of an Abomination. Its front leg was twice the size of Alexey, with claws longer than short swords that jutted out from dark paws. The body was many times larger than that of a horse, and pale white eyes fiercely glowed from its massive head. White teeth longer and sharper than daggers, stained by blood, flashed as the creature snarled. Each man remained frozen with fear, unable to speak or move, except for Alexey.
“Don’t let it see your fear,” Alexey muttered backwards from the corner of his mouth. “There’re enough of us here to make it back off. One Abomination won’t attack ten of us.”
The group’s fear instantly skyrocketed as a collection of footsteps gathered from the darkness beyond the creature in front of them. Within moments, three more Abominations appeared into the fire light. The four creatures grew ever tenser as their mouths flared. They all leaned their massive heads downwards towards the men as bloodied spit dripped through the gaps between their teeth.
“Will four Abominations attack ten of us?” someone squeaked. Alexey was far too terrified to know who it was.
The first Abomination’s head was now directly in front of Alexey’s body. It sniffed him curiously, then it grew even more hostile. The creature’s lips began to open, teeth flashing, and the pale white eyes now screamed with malicious intent.
Alexey was wholeheartedly convinced that the creatures were about to attack and add his group to the red on the floor, until shouts echoed from the direction of the cave’s entrance.
“Hey Alexey, good job finding another pocket!”
The A
bominations stopped flashing their teeth and perked up curiously at the shouts echoing farther towards the cave entrance. Alexey took the momentary break from the creature’s stare to back off a few steps.
“Alexey? Are you there?” The shout seemed to be slightly closer now.
Alexey dared not respond right away. Instead of shouting back himself, he calmly turned his head to his right, and whispered to Viktor behind him, “Get the farthest back in our group to call out to them. Get them over here now.” Viktor nodded and whispered behind him as Alexey had. The Abominations still peered towards the echoing shouts with violent curiosity. A stretched moment came and went before Igor shrieked loudly behind them. “Get over here now! Run!”
The Abominations snapped their heads downwards at the group and scanned the newly created gap Alexey had backstepped while the creatures were distracted. The Abominations returned to their hungry glares and began to inch forward. They better get here right fucking now, Alexey thought as he gulped, failing to disguise his terror.
Confused murmurs muffled through the cave from the shout’s origin point, but nevertheless, a resounding shout erupted from the new arrivals, and charging footsteps grew fiercer and more thunderous with each passing second.
The Abominations stopped in their tracks, but remained defensive in both posture and look, as the sea of footsteps now drowned out all other sounds.
“Get here quick!” Viktor shouted back.
Quick as lightning, two dozen men caught up with the group. The point man was a tall and seemingly fearless recruit named Tip, who immediately lost all outward courage as he laid eyes upon the four Abominations in front of the now thirty-four-strong group. The rest of the middle guard froze in their tracks as all they gaped at the creatures.
“Oh shit—” Tip began.
“Don’t show any fear!” Alexey interrupted. “Stand tall, stand your ground, and remain strong if they come any closer. Just follow my lead.”
Tip and the other middle guardsmen remained fearful but did their best to hide it as Alexey had commanded. For what seemed like multiple eternities, the Abominations remained in their aggressive and defensive postures, and stared down the group of men in front of them. If they were going to attack, they would have done it already. He took one step forward very slowly. Although they were behind him and out of sight, he could not see the men do so, but he heard multiple footsteps synchronize with his own. The Abominations remained motionless, but Alexey took yet another step. The Abominations remained poised until Alexey drew his dagger. The rest of the men readied whatever weapons they were carrying, be it swords, daggers, dirks, spears, or clubs. Their footsteps continued with Alexey’s.
The Abominations began to clamber backwards, with their steps unleashing resounding thuds as they backed away from the advancing recruits. They maintained their hostile glares, but surrendered their ground, nonetheless. Abominations were never one to meekly submit, Alexey remembered reading, but they were smart enough to recognize a threat they could not overcome. As small as the men were, there were too many in sight, and the edges of their blades were too deadly for any living creature to withstand.
The Abominations initiated a full retreat into the darkness of the cave whence they came. Alexey remained still, dagger still drawn as he refused to move for the next several minutes.
“It’s safe to say they’ve fucked off,” Anton said, breaking the seemingly perpetual silence.
Alexey slowly turned around to look at the group of men and began a celebratory laugh. His face was filled with amazement, relief, and intense joy. His laugh was contagious: the rest of the thirty-four men joined, laughing incredibly loudly. Nothing funny happened, but this is the hardest I’ve ever laughed in my life, Alexey reflected. Most of the men were curled up on the floor or lying straight on their backs with the laughter showing no signs of weakening. This great release of tension lasted a long time, though Alexey was too busy struggling to breathe to properly keep track of how long.
“What’s so funny?” a voice thundered behind the group. The tone was not of anger, Alexey noticed: the speaker had to shout to be heard. The laughter began to die down as the men turned to look towards the voice. “Don’t tell me we’re missing the party.” The voice belonged to someone from the rear guard whose name Alexey did not remember. The speaker was tall and scrawny with a thick hood hiding most of his face.
“Yeah, you sure missed a party alright,” Anton cracked. “But four of our gigantic, fur-covered friends left early.” The men who understood chuckled, while the rear guardsmen looked confused.
“The fuck you on about?” someone echoed.
“Four Abominations were about to murder Alexey and the other front guardsmen until we came in and saved their asses,” said Tip.
“You looked as if you shit your pants until I reassured you,” Alexey contended.
Tip scoffed while the rear guardsmen walked through the scattered middle guard and approached him. They walked up beside him and looked beyond the fire, which was now much dimmer than when Alexey glanced at it last.
One of the men pointed at the fire. “You light that?”
“No. It was—” Alexey pointed past the fire at the sea of blood and flesh as the joy on his face transformed into dread, “them.”
Seeing as how the Abominations had scattered and run away from him earlier, it was easy for Alexey to forget how a group of recruits, the Stars only knew how many, had been torn to pieces before anyone else had arrived. Although dim, the fire light glimmered off the blood. Among the chunks of flesh strewn about was a stretch of fabric from a coat. The fabric was not white, but dark red, and chunks of flesh were stuck in the fur lining.
“Who might be them?”
Alexey shrugged as the rear guardsman stiffly walked over to the sea of blood that lay in front of everyone. His footstep boldly ventured into the red, and the small sound of a splash could be heard with each of his steps.
“Recent,” he grunted ponderously. He leaned down and began to sniff the flesh in front of him. “And fresh.”
“Dude are you getting off on this?” said Anton.
Most of the men laughed, but the target of Anton’s joke remained starkly unamused. He reached out to the red stretch of fabric and picked it up with only a thumb and an index finger. As he lifted it, something fell from it and clanked and splashed upon hitting the ground. The men within earshot perked up curiously. The man squatted down to pick up the object, lifted it up to his face and inspected it closely.
“It’s an amulet.” He squinted to read something engraved on the item. “Poznan?”
“You know this, uh, Poznan?” Alexey inquired.
“I am Poznan.” He chuckled while turning around to showcase the amulet to Alexey. “Somebody stole this from me weeks ago, but I never found out who.” Poznan stood up and looked down upon the sea of red he was standing in. “I guess I never will.”
“Whoever it was, he was a thief. And he was stupid to refuse traveling in our group,” said Alexey.
“The Winterguard does not want dastards or inept cretins to be Hers,” Poznan said, mocking the Arch-Commander’s thunderous voice.
Many of the men began to chuckle, along with Alexey. His smile seemed almost fake has he remembered the Arch-Commander’s depot speech. I was so different back then. All I wanted was to be a true Winterguardsman. His thoughts quickly shifted towards the farming village, and how the Arch-Commander had terrified the villagers. He quickly returned to the present situation as Poznan strolled past him and back into the main group of recruits.
“All right, listen up!” Once the men had turned their attention to Alexey, he continued. “This is likely the only safe zone we’ll find today. We’ll likely freeze to death if we go any farther, so we set up camp here. We need more materials for a fire, so a group of no fewer than ten men ought to forage for that just outside,” Alexey said confidently. “We’ll sleep in the cave tonight. The Abominations are still in here with us, so we need to have gr
oups of ten to stand guards, changing shifts each hour. One group needs to set up the camp, another will forage for fire-starting materials, and I will go with the hunters and gatherers to try and find us food.”
As the men split off in the various groups to carry out the various tasks, Alexey departed for the cave entrance with the rest of the front guard to search for food, since they had depleted the last of their reserves two days prior. Finding food was not difficult but finding enough for a large group was a challenge. He thought a single Abomination could feed them for a week at minimum, but hunting those creatures was a particularly unenticing prospect.
While scrounging through the icy river bed and frozen shrubbery, Alexey thought of the depot, the march, the farming village, and his reasons for joining the Winterguard. He had originally joined because of the great stories his father and mother read to him as a child. My father was a Winterguardsman, so why would he lie about them? he wondered. When Alexey’s father was unavailable, his mother often sang or read to him. He yearned to hear her soft voice just one more time or hug her the way he did as a small child. She never lied to me. She only made me happy. His mother was always kind to him, singing and reading fairy tales to him that fully engrossed him, whereas his father had been falsely boasting about the great accomplishments of the noble Winterguard.
“Then, and only then, did the Northern armies truly realize they had failed!” his father said to him before bed, when Alexey was only five years old.
“Once they lost the horses?” Alexey’s voice squeaked at his father as he curled into his fur blanket as tightly as his childish strength could allow.
The Darkness of Dawn Page 14
